Finnish contemporary music third most performed in the US

The Baltimore Symphony Orchestra gathered data on the 2014-15 seasons that have been programmed by 21 major American orchestras. The orchestras were selected based on size and operating budget.

The orchestra created a database with most concerts and pieces — excluding pop or family concerts — that these orchestras will play during the coming season. For those pieces performed, the data tracks the number of performances a given piece will receive, the composer, a piece’s composition date, soloists, the composer’s nationality, gender and whether the composer is living.

According to the database, Finnish composers are third most performed living composers, with 5,5% of all the performances, following US (54,5%) and the UK (8,4%).

Composer and conductor Esa-Pekka Salonen is the fifth most performed living composer, with 14 performances scheduled for the upcoming season. By comparison, the most performed living composer is John Adams (35 performances) and the most performed composer overall is Beethoven (317 performances).

During the 2014-2015 season 21 symphony orchestras will perform more than 1000 pieces from 286 composers almost 4600 times.